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Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Yeah…and I still believe I should be reviewing sizzlin’ punk 45’s for the New York Rocker’s Disques Du’ Mondo column.

“I figure I was the most dominant player through my era,” he said. “I’m not in the Hall of Fame, but all the Hall of Famers know what I brought to the table. My numbers are as good as most Hall of Famers who went in over the last five or six years. I just hope I get in while I’m vertical.”

...The knock on Parker most likely dates to his part in a drug scandal. He ...

The first eight innings of the game were bad enough, but what transpired was truly the stuff of legends. Pathetic, pathetic legends.

Let’s review RISP we had that could have won the game at any time:
9th inning: Navarro on third, 1 out
11th inning: Gonzalez on second, 2 out
12th inning: Reddick on third, 1 out
13th inning: Ellsbury on third, 1 out
14th inning: Reddick on second, 1 out

And I will tell you what you must already know when I say not a one of those batters scored.

Look beyond Karstens’ 8-5 record and 2.28 ERA, second-lowest among National League starters. Take his strand rate, for instance.

That’s the percentage of guys Karstens leaves on base. It’s 86.6 percent. That’s just ridiculous. It’s the lowest among all of baseball’s starting pitchers. The only one close is former Pirate Ryan Vogelsong, now making the greatest ...

Contrary to a report in Monday’s New York Post, the National Baseball Hall of Fame is not considering dropping the waiting period for players to be eligible for induction from five to three years.

Post columnist Kevin Kernan didn’t quote anyone from Hall but wrote: “One reason Hall officials would want to shorten the waiting period is to make it a more ‘immediate’ event. There is a lot to be said for that because, why should sure-fire, first-ballot Hall ...

To answer my original question, I’d say that this is indeed the low point for the franchise in my memory. Perhaps you can point to off the field moments involving their long, painful quest for a new stadium, when it looked for sure like they were headed out of Seattle. But as far as the product on the field, I can’t think of anything to match this. There have been painful losses in the past, to be sure, but those were in the context of successful seasons that ...

What are you talking about? There was a lot of suspense! Do the Mariners lose by 5 runs? 6?

Seattle loses 10-3 and drops No. 16 in a row. That ties the 1944 Brooklyn Dodgers for the eighth longest streak in baseball history (seventh-longest if you go 1900 and later) and leaves them one away from the 1962 New York Mets at 17 in a row.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Increasingly, it has become fashionable to ask the question, in columns and on Twitter, “How long can the Mets go on playing Jason Bay on a regular basis?”

The answer, of course, is: for the rest of the 2011 season, at least.

As usual, the question is usually framed in a binary fashion: Bay, or no Bay? From that perspective, the answer seems easy. Bay has been just awful this year, with a .632 OPS in 307 plate appearances. That would be terrible at any position, but ...

Hear me out. I am proposing that those voted into the Hall of Fame be divided into three categories, as follows:

1. Red plaques Precede: There was a period of time, from roughly 1990 through the early 21st century, when performance-enhancing drugs invaded baseball. The following players are either admitted users, accused users, or, in the face of overwhelming circumstantial evidence, so strongly suspected of being users that ...

The Jerome Holtzman effect is a fictional non-scientific phenomenon in the baseball universe!

Nevertheless, not all saves are created equal. In an attempt to distinguish quality from quantity, a sliding points scale was used for rating closers: 5-3-1 for one-, two- and three-run saves.

...Of course, calling any save “easy” is like calling any doughnut low in calories; it just isn’t. Yet saves’ varying degrees of difficulty correspondingly differ in how they impact the closer and his team.

My Fritz Peterson foul ball from 1966…(had to beat 5,896 others in attendance that day to the ball!)

But the best group is, far-and-away, the children. When a little kid catches a ball (or is the first to pick it up), that pride and excitement that you see on their faces is fantastic. They’re excited when a parent or adult gives them a ball that they caught, but catching the ball themselves is the best. The Giants and Diamondbacks had two interesting moments this week, when young fans were ...

“We are not saying we don’t want to take part,” union president Takahiro Arai said. “But we will not be able compete under the current conditions, which are unfair.”

Japan won the first two editions of the WBC in 2006 and 2009. However, the Japanese players received only 13 percent of total revenue from the last tournament, compared to the 66 percent the MLB and its players took.

If memory serves, they did something similar back before the ‘09 Classic. Highly doubt they will actually pull ...

Here’s a space view of the stadium where the Cal Ripken World Series. As you can see, it’s based heavily on Camden Yards. Zoom around a bit and you’ll find other ballfields that are scaled-down versions of Fenway, Yankee and Wrigley. The stadium where the Aberdeen Ironbirds play is to the south.

Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera could become Hall of Famers much faster than expected after they retire. The waiting time is currently five years after a player retires to be named to the ballot. The National Baseball Hall of Fame, though, is considering making the waiting period only three years, The Post has learned.

That would be a great move.

...One reason Hall officials would want to shorten the waiting period is to make it a more “immediate” event. ...

It’s Trade Deadline week, so it’s appropriate to go back to the ‘93 deadline. Gillick had two deals going, one with Oakland for Rickey Henderson (Steve Karsay and a player to be named later), one with Seattle for Randy Johnson (Karsay and Mike Timlin).

He wanted the Johnson deal, but Pat couldn’t find Woody Woodward, who was playing golf. Sandy Alderson called and took the Henderson deal.

Here on USSM, we talk a lot about probability and likely outcomes. When making a decision, we think it’s generally wise to understand historical precedent, and to learn from history rather than repeat it.

But, there are times in life that you’re not making a decision, and knowledge of the probability of outcomes just doesn’t help at all. You are just rooting for one specific result, even if you don’t have any control over whether it occurs or not.

Or as the non-Fillpot faced Quaid brother said in Frequency...“Man, I’ll love Ron Swoboda till the day I die.”

You will read that headline, and think that we have ingested some mind-altering (make that mind-destroying) substance.

Ron Swoboda. A star? Clearly some kind of in-poor-taste joke served up by someone named Shirley. Ron Swoboda? The guy nicknamed “Rocky” (and this was well before Sly Stallone gave that name some cachet—“Rocky” was a nickname for the state of Ron’s career). He was up ...

Concepcion isn’t — and for reasons that remain rather dubious. ESPN motor mouth Skip Bayless has this saying of “this isn’t the Hall of Very Good,” but Concepcion was beyond good. He was a star at his position. He was one of the two best during his prime, something which would normally guarantee admission.

He’s hurt considerably from the large shadow cast by his Big Red Machine teammates and one Ozzie Smith, who was always ...

The control of the Boston National baseball club passed into the hands of President William Hepburn Russell Monday. The announcement that neither “Ned” Hanlon of Baltimore, Md., nor anyone else, can buy the club, followed the transfer of stock.

...

Baltimore will not obtain a franchise in the league without precipitating a baseball war between the leagues, according to Edward Barrow, president of the Eastern league, who issued a statement criticizing certain ...

Make Ed Thoma a BBWAA Chapter Chairperson!...Or at least let him walk Yogi around on stage or something!

But here’s the thing: Nobody’s numbers should be taken at face value. All baseball stats are creatures of context.

The National League — the entire league, pitchers included — hit .303 in 1930. In the American League in 1968, no regular player hit better than .301. An outfielder in the 1930 NL who hit .290 wasn’t helping; an outfielder in the 1968 AL who hit .290 was a star.

While the barriers between traditional and advanced baseball analysis are falling every day — hearing David Cone cite FanGraphs during a Yankees-Rays broadcast this week was awesome — there are still certain players who are a wedge between non-saberists and saberists. It’s always the same pattern: one side thinks Player X is awesome, the other doesn’t. Flame wars ensue. Each side cites statistics to back up their position, then declares that the other side’s statistics are worthless. ...Read More...

Oh, I like you too, and to tell you the truth
That was my bill1chair after all…

My endangered industry faces far more complex problems. Unlike major league baseball, newspapers are not awash in money. We’ve been shot at and hit. The way we did things for centuries literally vanished in a few mouse clicks.

We came late to the party, trying to keep pace with a technology so powerful a government can be toppled by a thousand protesters with smart phones, Facebook accounts and a common cause. ...

BALTIMORE—Even if 19-year-old Mike Trout hits hundreds of home runs during his big league career, he will never forget the first.

Everything went right for Trout on Sunday, whose three-run drive in the eighth inning helped secure a 9-3 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.

With family and friends in attendance, Trout hit a 3-1 pitch from Mark Worrell into the left field seats to turn a 3-2 lead into a four-run cushion. He got the silent treatment upon returning to the dugout before being mobbed ...

Einhorn’s $200 million purchase of a 33 percent stake in the money-losing Mets franchise is structured as a loan—with the hedge-fund investor getting paid back in three years and having his stake reduced to about 16 percent.

JPMorgan Chase, which is owed about $500 million by the team, won’t approve such a deal unless its loans get serviced—repaid or restructured—prior to Einhorn.

In addition to objecting to the Einhorn deal, in the last few months the bank wrote a “tough” ...

Sunday, July 24, 2011

On May 15, 1948, the Philadelphia Athletics took on the New York Yankees in a doubleheader. What’s significant is not that the A’s, who finished a surprising fourth in the American League, swept the Yankees in New York, 3-1 and 8-6. After all, the Yankees were in a down year and finished in third place.

On that Saturday afternoon before 69, 416 fans, Yogi Berra caught both ends of the double dip for the first of what would eventually be 117 times. Berra had an atypical offensive day. He ...

The HOF inductions start at 12:30 on MLB Network, and if this is up by then you can use this as a chatter. Here, by the way, is the Clark Sports Center, where the inductions are held (as you can see, when it’s not used for inductions it is, well, a actual sports center with softball, soccer, etc.)

Or as the chicken parmigiant Michael the K said yesterday…“It looks like Jemile Weeks goes to the same barber as his brother.” (in-studio stale Snicker bars abound)

Morgan was simply a disgrace in center field Friday night, at least by modern-day standards. The bleacher fans were riding him, as is their custom with most any opposing outfielder, and Morgan heard every word. He routinely engaged them with words and sweeping gestures, at least one of them carrying the hint of malice, and created ...

And for this, the MLB Network pays him how much? (reaches for dusty “BOWA GOTTA GOWA” sign)

Still, Bowa said he’s not sure whether he’d like to return to the field as a manager or coach, even though he looked fit and probably 10 years younger than his age.

“I like what I’m doing,” he said. “I don’t like the way a lot of people approach the game now. I don’t want to categorize everybody, but there are a lot of general managers who throw everything into a computer and then try to pick their ...